[rescue] A bit of Fun

[Eric Dittman]

> >> 1. Worst Machine Architecture
> >
> > PC/AT and every PeeCee incarnation ever since.  I'll give IBM credit 
> > for the original PC, ugly as it may have been, I was impressed the 
> > first time I first touched one in 1983-ish, but I think they had the 
> > chance to do so much better with the AT.
> 
>    In their defense I must say that most of the shortcomings of the AT 
> design were known at the time, but nothing could be done about them 
> while still maintaining software compatibility with the PC and XT 
> designs. :-(

Things could have been done without breaking the
interfaces programmers were supposed to use, but
to get any speed programs had to bypass some of
the interfaces.  That's where things started to
cause problems.

If programs did not bypass the system calls,
the computer did not have to be 100%-compatible.
A good example was the TRS-80 Model 2000.  That
was faster and had better graphics than the AT,
but was not 100% compatible.
-- 
Eric Dittman
dittman at dittman.net